Political Commentary

Warren Beatty’s Incipient Political Career

…is mercilessly mocked by Mark Steyn:

Will he do it? “I don’t want to run for governor,” he said the other day, making it sound like he’s interested in the role but he won’t audition. He’s certainly in the right party: The Democrats have already taken on most of the characteristics of a bad Hollywood project — no ideas, script full of ancient cliches, but if you can get the right star to commit to it we just might make this thing fly. And, though he’s never run for office before, Beatty has the crucial ingredient: name recognition. All over California, women are going: “Warren Beatty? Oh, yeah, right, now I remember. That guy I had sex with in the late ’60s.”

…In 2003, you’ll recall, the Los Angeles Times assigned a special team to look into Arnold’s sexual background. If they do Warren in the same way, it’ll be the biggest hiring bonanza in U.S. journalism for a century. Usually, when his magnificent track record of famous conquests is brought up, Beatty indignantly points out that he’s had sex with a lot of very obscure women, too…

…Whether this hands-on approach to tackling the problems of the unemployed can be applied statewide is doubtful. No governor can have sex with every struggling woman in California, though, of course, Beatty does have the advantage of an impressive head start…

War Commentary

Weird Headline

Saddam Hussein’s defense team has lost 1100 lawyers. Like the old joke of what you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a good start.

I was some combination of amused and befuddled by this. I had no idea that he had so much legal ballast that could be tossed. It would seem that the trial will require a soccer stadium just to hold the defense team. How many lawyers are left?

I suppose the next step is for his remaining lawyers to move for a mistrial on the basis of lack of adequate legal representation.

[Update an hour or so later]

The more I read this story, the stranger it seems, and I have to wonder at the reporter who passed it on without asking the obvious questions.

How did these people become Saddam’s “lawyers”? Why so many of them? Who is paying for them? I don’t know what percentage of the population of Iraq is lawyers, but don’t they have something better to do, anyway? Has there been a lot of lawyering not going on because of the large contingent on Saddam’s defense team?

And if so, is this not actually bad news for the Iraqis, since they’ll now, being relieved of the burden of defending the former predator-in-chief, return to their own predation on the wealth and welfare of the country?

[Update at 10:15 AM PST]

Fox is reporting on the story now. No answers to my questions, but they do say that the presiding judge claims that “…the withdrawals will have no effect on the work of the court.”

Heh.

General

Fast Cheap Flu Vaccine

If H5N1 is so lethal, it might be a justifiable move on utilitarian grounds to manufacture and release H5N2 or something so people with partial immunity to the most common variants could obtain partial immunity to H5N1. That would probably not be condoned because the idea of killing tens of thousands to innoculate and thereby protect millions who would otherwise die in an H5N1 pandemic is morally and politically dead on arrival (pun intended). If we can’t stomach 2,000 dead in Iraq, there are many high utility strategies that are not options. This one can be pursued, however, by a determined minority.

Satire

A New Opera

Iowahawk first toyed with the opera form during the Clinton administration, resulting in the now-classic Il Scumbaggio (though it hasn’t been performed recently). He has recently penned another masterpiece, this time in French–Le Risibles.

You’ll particularly enjoy the finale grande–“The Age Of Eurabia”:

When Mahmooooud is in the Notre Dame
And prayer rugs line Versailles
Then this will please the Prophet
We’ll get hot chicks in Paradise!

This is the dawning of the Age of Eurabia!
Age of Eurabiaaaaa!
Eu-ra-bi-AH! Eu-RA-bi-ah!
Harmony and peace abounding
all the Jews we will be hounding
No more blaspheme or derision
Imams making all decisions
Mystic Qu

Media Criticism

Setting Her Straight

Emily Will says that Mary Mapes is living in an alternate reality, and that her book is rife with errors:

Mapes: Page 167: “Concerned, I asked her what the trouble was. She said she had done research on the Internet about President Bush’s military record and found that he had been in Alabama at the time those documents were written, so there was no way they could be true.”

Will: Book version is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. What did happen is that in our conversation on Sunday I outlined several problems with two questioned signatures, and with the typescript of the documents, including the superscripting and the proportional spacing, and I said that I had been researching online to determine the earliest date of production of typewriters offering those features.

Don’t book publishers care about this sort of thing?

General

Remember The Doughboys

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Note that the number of WW I vets has dwindled down to a few dozen. Barring some miracle medical breakthroughs, in another decade they will all lie (at least metaphorically) in Flanders fields. Honor today the few who are still with us, and their compatriots who no longer are. And thank, silently or otherwise, those in harm’s way today overseas.

[Update a few minutes later]

Ralph Kinney Bennett has some further thoughts.

By the way, I’ll be keeping this post at the top all day, so if you come back and still see it, scroll down past it–there may be new posts below.

Humor

Foul Bait

I just got this email from a phisherman attempting to capture my Ebay information:

We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your eBay account, and multiple password failures were present before the logons. We strongly advice [sic] CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD.

If this is not completed by Octomber [sic] 20, 2005, we will be forced to suspend your account indefinitely, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes. Thank you for your cooperation.

(By the way, the URL for the frauds is at the domain: http://dsl-chn-static-045.45.101.203.touchtelindia.net/ in case someone else wants to turn them in to Ebay and the FBI.)

Note also that I got this email on Novober…errr…November 11. But maybe Octomber comes after that. It’s hard to know…

Social Commentary

Changing Times

I’m watching PBS (more specifically, KCET), and they’re doing a Veterans Day show hosted by Huell Howser, in which I’m watching a group of Civil War reenactors singing “When Johnnie Comes Marching Home.” It’s been a long time since I heard the whole song, and in 2005, one feels more than a little sympathy for them, wondering what has to be going through their minds as they have to sing “…and we’ll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home…”

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!